CVE-2021-32690 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) Information Exposure vulnerability in helm.sh/helm/v3. A fix is available for helm.sh/helm/v3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Helm passes repository credentials to alternate domain
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-32690 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
helm.sh/helm/v3Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
While working on the Helm source, a Helm core maintainer discovered a situation where the username and password credentials associated with a Helm repository could be passed on to another domain referenced by that Helm repository.
Impact
The index.yaml within a Helm chart repository contains a reference where to get the chart archive for each version of a chart. The reference can be relative to the index.yaml file or a URL to location. The URL can point to any domain and this is a feature leveraged by Helm users. For example, an index.yaml file can be hosted on GitHub pages while the chart archives are hosted as GitHub releases. These are on different domain names and the index.yaml file points to the other domain.
When a username and password were associated with a Helm repository the username and password were also passed on to other domains referenced in the index.yaml file. This occurred when Helm went to retrieve a specific chart archive on the other domain.
Patches
This issue has been resolved in 3.6.1.
There is a slight behavior change to credential handling with regard to repositories. Usernames and passwords are only passed to the URL location of the Helm repository by default. The username and password are scoped to the scheme, host, and port of the Helm repository. To pass the username and password to other domains Helm may encounter when it goes to retrieve a chart, the new --pass-credentials flag can be used. This flag restores the old behavior for a single repository as an opt-in behavior.
Workarounds
If you use a username and password for a Helm repository you can audit the Helm repository in order to check for another domain being used that could have received the credentials. In the index.yaml file for that repository, look for another domain in the urls list for the chart versions. If there is another domain found and that chart version was pulled or installed the credentials would have been passed on.
For more information
Helm's security policy is spelled out in detail in our SECURITY document.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | helm.sh/helm/v3 | all versions | 3.6.1go get helm.sh/helm/v3@v3.6.1 |
Affected Products
helmhelmDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for helm.sh/helm/v3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update helm.sh/helm/v3 to 3.6.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-32690 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes: In Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (RHACM) the affected components are using helm chart provided by the installer, so components are not using untrusted charts except in the application-lifecycle area. For this reason we marked the impact as low.…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.9 | openshift4/ose-console:v4.9.0-202110130449.p0.git.8c077e4.assembly.rc.8 | RHSA-2021:3759 |
| RHACS-3.67-RHEL-8 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-rhel8-operator:3.67.0-3 | RHSA-2021:4902 |
| RHEL-8 based Middleware Containers | web-terminal-tech-preview/web-terminal-exec-rhel8:1.3-9 | RHEA-2021:3139 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-32690 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.